Aimless In Space
--J.B.S. Haldane--
Rachael - Detroit - WSU
Mad Scientist-in-Training
Clastrophysicist (Classics/Astronomy/Physics)
This is my super spectacular (mostly) space blog!! I also enjoy math, Doctor Who, Supernatural, Cowboy Bebop, Fullmetal Alchemist, jellyfish, Detroit, Futurama, and cats.
-
Play
Everyday is like Sunday
Everyday is silent and grey
Hide on the promenade
Etch a postcard :
“How I Dearly Wish I Was Not Here” -
-
Taken by photographer Alison Jackson in 2008. Her quote: ‘I was shooting Benedict Cumberbatch the star...
-
-
A look back at the best views of our planet from space in the last year, including true color satellite images, Earth science data visualizations, time lapses from the International Space Station, and computer models
Saturn is Like an Antiques Shop, Cassini Suggests
A new analysis of data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft suggests that Saturn’s moons and rings are gently worn vintage goods from around the time of our solar system’s birth.
Though they are tinted on the surface from recent “pollution,” these bodies date back more than 4 billion years. They are from around the time that the planetary bodies in our neighborhood began to form out of the protoplanetary nebula, the cloud of material still orbiting the sun after its ignition as a star. The paper, led by Gianrico Filacchione, a Cassini participating scientist at Italy’s National Institute for Astrophysics, Rome, has just been published online by the Astrophysical Journal.
“Studying the Saturnian system helps us understand the chemical and physical evolution of our entire solar system,” said Filacchione. “We know now that understanding this evolution requires not just studying a single moon or ring, but piecing together the relationships intertwining these bodies.”Though they are tinted on the surface from recent “pollution,” these bodies date back more than 4 billion years. They are from around the time that the planetary bodies in our neighborhood began to form out of the protoplanetary nebula, the cloud of material still orbiting the sun after its ignition as a star. The paper, led by Gianrico Filacchione, a Cassini participating scientist at Italy’s National Institute for Astrophysics, Rome, has just been published online by the Astrophysical Journal.
Light from Many Paths
The unlit side of the rings glows with scattered sunlight as two moons circle giant Saturn. The light reaching Cassini in this view has traveled many paths before being captured.
At left, Mimas (397 kilometers, or 247 miles across) presents its dark side. Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across), on the far side of the rings, is lit by “Saturnshine,” or reflected sunlight coming from the planet. Saturn, in turn, is faintly lit in the south by light reflecting off the rings.
Saturn’s shadow darkens the rings, tapering off toward the left side of this view.
Peering Deep into Jupiter’s Atmosphere
The dark hot spot in this false-color image from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft is a window deep into Jupiter’s atmosphere. All around it are layers of higher clouds, with colors indicating which layer of the atmosphere the clouds are in. The bluish clouds to the right are in the upper troposphere, or perhaps higher still, in the stratosphere. The reddish gyre under the hot spot to the right and the large reddish plume at its lower left are in the lower troposphere. In addition, a high, gauzy haze covers part of the frame. An annotated version of this image highlights the hot spot in the middle with an arrow and boxes around the plume and the gyre.
This image was taken on Dec. 13, 2000, by Cassini’s imaging science subsystem.
Mimas Peeks Over Saturn
Saturn and its north polar hexagon dwarf Mimas as the moon peeks over the planet’s limb. Saturn’s A ring also makes an appearance on the far right. Mimas is 246 miles (396 kilometers) across.
This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 21 degrees above the ringplane. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Nov. 28, 2012 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 752 nanometers.
Sunlight scatters through Saturn’s rings, emerging on the unilluminated side. Prometheus (102 kilometers, or 63 miles across, lower right) and Pandora (84 kilometers, or 52 miles across, upper left) are visible here, respectively internal and external to the narrow F ring.
This view looks toward the rings from about 17 degrees above the ringplane. The planet’s shadow darkens the rings near upper left.
NASA SDO - Dark Flag Rising
A long-lasting double flare and a coronal mass ejection erupted from the Sun over a five-hour period (February 5-6, 2013). The eruptive plasma was cooler than the surface and denser, causing it to appear almost like a flag unraveling. Following the event the magnetic field lines above the source area appear as coils as they try to reconnect themselves. The event also seemed to disrupt a filament to its left, highlighting its edges in white light. Images were taken in extreme ultraviolet light.
Credit: NASA SDO
NASA Scientists Observe the Sun in Different Wavelengths
Click the picture to read the article.
Astronomers have long known that a spectacular barred spiral galaxy named NGC 6872 is a behemoth, but by compiling data from several space- and ground-based observatories and running a few computer simulations, they have now determined this is the largest spiral galaxy we know of.
This composite of the giant barred spiral galaxy NGC 6872 combines visible light images from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope with far-ultraviolet data from NASA’s GALEX and 3.6-micron infrared data acquired by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/ESO/JPL-Caltech/DSS
In many ways, the ongoing eruption of Shiveluch is typical of the activity that occurs along a volcanic arc. Thick lava rises from the interface between two convergent tectonic plates. In this case, the relatively light continental crust of the Kamchatka Peninsula is overriding dense oceanic crust, which is being pulled into the Earth’s interior. Instead of flowing down Shiveluch’s steep slopes, the thick, pasty lava builds upwards in a formation known as a lava dome.
Bopha continued moving toward the Philippines on December 3, 2012. The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite(VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite acquired this natural-color image the same day. Over the previous day, Bopha moved west of Palau, and by December 3, storm clouds were skirting the island of Mindanao.
The same day that VIIRS acquired this image, the U.S. Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) reported that Bopha packed sustained winds of 140 knots (260 kilometers per hour) and gusts up to 170 knots (315 kilometers per hour). The storm was located about 630 nautical miles (1,170 kilometers) southeast of the Philippine capital of Manila, and was moving toward the west-northwest, JTWC reported.
